Happy families?:
Divorce returns to SoHo this week with Frances (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Robert (Thomas Haden Church) determined to move on with their lives – but not everyone feels the same way. Jane Mulkerrins reports.
Thomas Haden Church prepares for the next round of his Divorce.
Divorce stars Sarah Jessica Parker and Thomas Haden Church didn’t need to look far for inspiration as the dark comedy returns to SoHo this week – it came from their own families. In the new season, Frances and Robert are determined to move on, with their divorce being finalised, but their teenage children, Lila and Tom, are not quite ready to let go of the past. Lila, in particular, decides her mother is the enemy. “Sarah Jessica, and I, and many of the people involved with the show have teenagers, so we have plenty of experience with their attitudes and their volatility,” says Haden Church. “As a parent, you can go from friend to nemesis in a second. “I’ve got a 13-year-old daughter and things can get pretty testy between her and her mother (from whom he is separated). I have witnessed some excruciating battles between the two of them.” For Robert, there are no such pitched battles this season, “but there are definitely some tetchy situations that happen with Tom,” the actor reveals. “He becomes involved with a teenage girl and it is just not politic at all. It is shoved into Robert’s face, in his home. He doesn’t even know this girl and, in the vernacular, she and Tom have rounded the bases.” While his teenage son is making his first, fumbling forays into sexual relationships, Robert himself is embarking on an equally educational journey, as he tries to rebuild his own romantic life. “Both Robert and Frances have been out of the dating world for a solid 25, maybe even 30 years,” observes Haden Church. “And it is an entirely different world now. They have no idea what the roles are any more.” Robert, for his part, gets back in touch with a single mother from his children’s school, with whom he had a brief fling last season. Frances, meanwhile, is persuaded to try out Tinder. “Within minutes, she is shocked by what she is seeing,” says Haden Church. “We all were.
Some of the writers on the show use Tinder and we were all fooling around with it when we were working on that episode.
“You are swiping through, and women and men will say, ‘Let’s just get past all the BS; what are you up for? If we get together, is there going to be (explicit sexual practice)?’
“People seriously ask for this stuff on Tinder,” he says, agog. “That sort of thing was taboo when I was young; it was something only porn stars did.”
Their middle-age adventures in dating offer snapshots of how Robert and Frances functioned as a couple early in their relationship, an aspect that was absent from season one.
But Parker has spoken of the central relationship being, “An ordinary middle class marriage in America right now”, and its breakdown, “Speaking to the hopes and dreams of a particular generation of people,” as well as the role played by the economic crisis almost a decade ago.
“The back-story we built is that Robert worked on Wall Street, where he rose to a very comfortable management level,” says Haden Church. “He did a solid six figures, and they bought a beautiful house in a very affluent area – Hastings, right on the Hudson. And then somebody suggested to him, have you ever tried doing investment properties and flipping?”
After initial success, Robert quit his Wall Street job and worked in property, but the financial crisis of 2008 began a decline in his fortunes.
“Because of his success 15 years ago, though, Robert has a rather out-sized ego and that ego is what kept all of these plates spinning,” says Haden Church. “Then the plates start breaking, one by one, but that ego just keeps going, until it is all finally revealed as being nothing but hot air.”
This season he finally realises he needs to take a different tack in his life. “Robert’s decisions can’t come from the fortitude of who he thinks he is or was. It really has to come from him stripping down and starting over,” says Haden Church.
It is a situation to which the actor could closely relate.
“I’ve had times in my life where the offers and opportunities stopped coming my way. I was in my early 40s and I really felt vulnerable,” he recalls. “I realised I had to start getting back to work in a very real way, hustling and auditioning. Then I was cast in Sideways and my career had a whole second life.”
“I’ve got a 13-year-old daughter and things can get pretty testy between her and her mother. I have witnessed some excruciating battles between the two of them.” – Thomas Haden Church